BlackSilentMaj's JumboTweets
- Detroit’s Teacher
Sickouts © 2016
Guess who’s getting hurt most?
DETROIT'S TEACHER SICKOUTS
GUESS WHO'S GETTING HURT MOST?
Detroit’s a city that’s been making great strides. But most people know the city will not make the progress it needs to make until crime and the quality of public education improves.
The Detroit Federation of Teachers, the union that represents teachers, has played a major role in the decline of public education in Detroit. After all, it represents the people who are paid to educate the city’s children.
Detroit parents, who saw the quality of their children’s education suffer, didn’t stick around for matter to get worse. They took their children out of the Detroit Public Schools. So many parents sought out alternatives that a school district that once numbered over 250,000 is now down to 40,000 students today.
Back to the DFT. In a strategy to get higher wages and more benefits for teachers, the DFT has devised a new scheme. It has lumped building conditions, classroom size, a demand to remove the school’s emergency manager together with its demand for higher teacher wages and benefits. This approach may appeal to anyone who is not a critical thinker or who doesn’t know the history of the DFT.
The teacher’s union has created this fake “us” versus “them” scenario that portrays teachers as victims and “saviors” of Detroit’s public schools. It has used the tactics of civil rights protesters to win sympathy with some Detroiters. However, when you think about all of the sickouts affecting Detroit’s schools, and all the days of school students have missed, it’s not the teachers who are the victims, it’s the students.
To be fair, Detroit has some excellent schools in Cass Tech, Martin Luther King, Renaissance, and a few others. That said, too many Detroit schools have failed at educating Detroit’s young people. But make no mistake about it; these sickouts are nothing but a power play by the teacher’s union. It wants to run the school system.
As mentioned, the main goal of the teacher union, cloaked in concern about student health and building conditions, is a push for more money from a district that is hurting because too many Detroit parents were fed up with the ongoing circus, and they abandoned the district.
For decades, the DFT has been a partner in the lousy educations Detroit’s students have received. The DFT, over the years, has been content to allow incompetent teachers to remain on the job. The DFT has been content to let Detroit’s poor students remain in underperforming schools with no way out. It’s a group that has opposed efforts that would allow parents to take their children out of inferior schools whether those measures were charters or vouchers.
The tragedy of the sickout is that many poor Detroit parents don’t know when they’ve been suckered. Some actually believe the teachers are on their side. Even during the sickouts, the quality of education in Detroit’s public schools remains an afterthought. All you’ve heard has been about building conditions, the emergency manager, the governor, wages, and benefits. What about the children and the quality of education they’ve been receiving for the last 40 years?
When teachers go out on sickouts, who do you think is hurt the most? The emergency manager? The governor? If this question was on an exam, everyone would get an “A.” The answer is simple. It’s the students. The students are being used as pawns as always. The teacher’s union is willing to sacrifice the entire school year to make a point, and Detroiters should be outraged.